I will say that her kid-perception did not map to actual test results. One section, she answered all 30 questions, said she thought she got them all right, and scored a 19. One section, she answered 22 of 28, said she guessed on almost all of them, and scored a 19.
My only caveat to your thoughts above would be to not assume that she was very off. If, as I suspect, she thought that the reading was easy and she scored a 19, she only missed two questions out of the 30. My son had the same reading score and at first I assumed it was a bit of a weakness, but our school district had posted some answers about the EXPLORE for 8th grade parents and this was the answer re: "my son only missed two questions, how did he end up with a 19?"ACT uses an equipercentile equating methodology and smoothing procedure that results in Explore subscale scores that have the same meaning across multiple years and forms. In other words, a student that obtains a subscale score of 18 one year is performing at the same academic level as a student that obtains a subscale score of 18 on a different year using a different form. You are correct, this year on the Reading subscale obtaining 28 out of 30 items correct resulted in a Reading subscale score of 19; earning 29 out of 30 items correct resulted in Reading subscale score of 22 and earning 30 out of 30 items correct yielded a Reading subscale score of 25. In the case of this specific subscale with 30 total items, missing one or two questions has in impact in terms of subscale score that is remarkable. This is not an error nor is it necessarily a weakness of this test. As a predictor of future success on the PLAN and ACT the Explore is highly reliable.
